Migration of 1.5 million Hours of
Audio-Visual Material at
the Swedish National Archive of
Recorded Sound and Moving Images

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Martin Jacobson
Head of Technology and Development,
Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images

During the year of 2006 SLBA has run a project to establish an infrastructure for mass-migration of substantial parts of its analogue audio and video collections to digital files, which are subsequently made available online. A number of “unconventional methods” were used such as high-speed transfer, automation using robotics, and a suite of custom scripts that automatically process the digitized files. The infrastructure includes an in-house developed migration asset management system that handles both physical and logical material logistics including metadata, final storage and linkage to the description database records. SLBA has made a first selection… all formats included they will begin by migrating nearly 1.5 million hours in approximately 3 years, adding additional production lines as needed.

Much improved preservation and access capabilities motivate this enormous effort and SLBA would like to share their experiences, including these issues:

• what issues were considered when creating a migration strategy?
• why did SLBA decide not to outsource?
• what were the stumbling blocks?
• a look at the solutions, costs and metrics.
  

Presently two ¼ inch open-reel audio formats are being migrated to Broadcast Wave files at a rate of 1500 hours per day on one shift. By February 2007 SLBA will be underway with the robotic migration of 576 hours of audio per day from the data tape format QIC, and also the robotic migration of VHS tapes to MPEG files at a rate of 252 hours per day through 12 VHS players running 24/7. Impending video formats to be migrated are Digital Betacam and DVC-Pro. With the help of some external consultancy, SLBA developed the robotic system by way of adapting a data-tape robot, creating machine control and communication software, and quality control functions.

 

Martin Jacobson
Martin Jacobson is presently Head of Technology and Development at The Swedish National Archive of Recorded Sound and Moving Images. He studied Electronic Engineering Technology and has twenty-five years experience in technology issues including communications and audiovisual applications and systems. For more than a decade he has focused primarily on digitization and preservation issues related to audiovisual content. He has recently led a successful effort to create an automated mass digitization facility with a capacity of 650 thousand hours per year. He teaches classes in Digital Archiving at the University of Stockholm, and Audiovisual Digitization at the University of Gothenburg.